


A Liar's Chair

by PinkScarfLady



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dream Bubble, F/M, Post-Sburb
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-10-01
Updated: 2012-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-24 02:21:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkScarfLady/pseuds/PinkScarfLady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You see this now, obvious as a neon sign above your head, you are your own undoing, and now, you're dead. Huh. You thought you would've died in a way that meant something, but save the Heroic deaths for the Heroes. You are Vriska Serket and you are not a Hero. You wish you knew this sooner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Life Long Relived

**Author's Note:**

> First fanfiction for a while, critique is always welcome and I will be updating tags as the story goes on.  
> This is a post-sburb story with several unconventional pairings, because I am the Crack Shipping Master, It's me.

You sneer, how would Terezi exact this "JUST1C3" anyways? She's no psionic and she lives pretty far from your Lawnring. You know what? Just for laughs, you'll consult your all-knowing cue ball... But as you are about to use your eyesight eightfold to see your answer, a sickening familiarity arises in your gut...

  
 ...Oh, right, you remember. You remember it all. Wet blue blood is again soaking a familiar bright orange garment representing your apparent victory, no more glasses, eyesight eightfold, wings, luck and a thin stab wound in your chest. You are Vriska Serket and you are dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. Your death wasn't dramatic, or bloody, courageous or valiant, it was quick and it was fast and it was nessecary. You never thought that would be how you would die, you thought for sweeps, since you were a wriggler, that you were destined for greater things, to die in a bloody last stand after a long fight, to take your killer with you to the grave, a death of honor and heroism, but not to be run through in split seconds, to spend your last moments crumpeled on the ground, defeated and soaked in your swirling, poison, cerulean swill.

For what seems like sweeps, you watch your last moments through the eyes of a spectator, over and over and over again. It hurts at first and fills you with rage, rage which turns to sorrow, and eventually, torment. This is not the only memory you have had to watch repeatedly, you have been watching your very own life, all 6 sweeps of it, and within it everything you've ever done, every troll you threw to your lusus, every moment of that stupid pride, every idea and every time you've stabbed someone in the back for your personal gain, though the memories are only half of it.

In this torturous web of memories, sometimes, you get stuck inbetween them, time in a replica of your hive, but completely empty. It's so quiet, you never remember a time you wanted to scream more, nothing makes noise here except for the muted ones that exist in your own little circle of hell. Even though you had to kill hundreds upon thousands to feed your lusus, you have never felt regret, shame, or loneliness. Never felt regret until now because winners don't have anything to regret, and you're a winner, right?  
...Wrong

You are no winner, you are no hero. When you are alone in an empty world, all you can do is think and that made you extremely nervous. You don't want to know your own thinkpan because what you might find there might scare you. What you found there scares you. You've turned to psychoanalysis, unintentionally, at first, when you saw your life through for the first time, you wanted to know where you went wrong, but the deeper the dug, the more you found, the more you found, the deeper you dug. And the deepest truth was horrifying.

  
You paralyzed possibly one of the only people on Alternia who could stand you. You blinded someone so close to you they may as well have been your reflection. You killed a girl through someone she trusted completely, just for trying to avenge her partner. You killed a boy you've terrorized for reasons that don't matter anymore. You are killed by someone who deserved to kill you. You no longer feel anger, just regret. You based your life off someone who may have shared your symbol, but was not you at all, she had chivalry where you had ambition. You ran from yourself and all your failures since all you could see is victories that only existed to you. You are your own undoing, you, Vriska Serket, have come to hate yourself, hatred that grows with every moment you see of your life. So you watch every moment again and again because you can't look away because you can't; tears make their way down your face and you hope this is not the afterlife. You're dead but this can't be the afterlife, you hope for the love of anything this is not the afterlife.

You don't have any idea of how long it's been, but after a long, long time... you're somewhere new. Somehow, you still remained curled up, hugging your knees and crying like the pathetic bitch you happen to be, but you still can see, smell, and hear this memory, so obviously not your own. You are on a beach, feet where the water would be, but not getting wet. This cannot be your memory. Your blood was simply too low to live oceanside, in fact, Gamzee, funny even thinking that name now, was the only one you knew who lived by the water, his was the only blood high enough for it. Wait. Ampora. When you were in a very black relationship, you both went to eachother's hives and his, unlike all the other seadwellers, was on dry land by the shore, like an indigo. You both once ruled the game of FLARP as Dualscar and Mindfang. This place was his. Almost to confirm this,a blurry figure at the very edge of your vision took a single step forwards... Perhaps he too is stuck in this twisted prison of thoughts, and now neither of you have to be alone, perhaps if your luck traversed beyond life. You couldn't face anyone else, you'd barely be able to face him... no, not even him. This world would've been better without you, simple as that. Your Lusus may have gotten a weaker troll and starved, Terezi might still be able to see, Aradia wouldn't have died and Tavros wouldn't have faced all those years of shit you put him through. You don't deserve to even exist in this stupid web of memories, you won't let yourself be happy after all you have done, no joy, only remorse and guilt.

Though through crossed arms and somehow bleary eyes, you see the figure take another cautious step and a small spark of what may be hope in your mind ignites while a ghost of a once-confident smirk tugs at your lips. You'd know that cape anywhere.


	2. Chapter 2

He walked up to you by the shoreline and sat directly next to you, no words, just enjoying eachothers company while being miserable.

"Just like old times." You hear him mutter quietly. It's the first thing you've heard that didn't sound echoey, diluted or distant for as long as you can remember, even you begin to fade in this world of thoughts.

"Talking to yourself Eridan?" You quip with a faint smile, you think that's the first time you've ever actually used his first name.

"I'vve made so many mistakes Vvris." You ex-kismesis mumbles, now inching closer to you, eventually resting his head on your shoulder (while mindful of his horns) and you let him. He moves as carefully as if you were made out of dust, like you'll scatter and disappear if he moves too quickly or too forcefully. You have the same thoughts (how could he really be here anyways, isn't this _your_ afterlife?), but reposition you both into an awkward and very bony hug without much problems.

"I have too." You whisper back in a small voice. Not yours. It's quiet and scared like you're sharing a secret, just you and him. This sickens, no sickened some part of you that had long faded into the background, this part took your pride with it.

Nothing else is said. There isn't much else to be said. You aren't clinging to eachother, just leaning. Neither of you say anything when tears started soaking your already blood-drenched clothes. You don't move or shift for what feels like it could be days... you are finally able to breathe. There isn't any fight left in you, you guess, but, maybe he's not so bad. When you finally move to walk around this empty shore, Eridan follows. To kill the silence, you ask him for his life story, he agrees if you tell yours as well. To your own surprise, you agree.

You hear about his hive and his lusus, his views on pretty much everything, his Flarping days and his ancestor. He listens to you for what may as well be first time and finds out about your lusus, your neibour and all the moirails you've managed to toss away. You learn he murdered Feferi, Kanaya and blinded Sollux in a fit of Angel-Fueled rage. He finds out how you killed Tavros, just because you could.... he left you to die a slow death, _at the time it made sense!_ He doesn't turn away, he sorta reminds you of John there, John didn't turn away either.

It was weird at first, and stirred something both of you were only too familiar with. A sort of respect of eachother from the days of your kismesisship still remained for him, and it was not too hard for you to piece back together what you had left. After all,he had held his own against powerful, vengeful game constructs for several days completely alone, he was an excellent strategist and occasionally funny ( _very_ occasionally). You were both powerful and dangerous, you both have guilt haunting the corners of your thoughts and you both were more emotional than you'd care to admit behind the stoic and diva masks, not to mention your mutual dramatic flair. It was almost scary how who at one point in time you would have called a pretencious douchebag, turned out to be strikingly similar to you. Though he did have his differences, he'd never really recovered losing Feferi as a moirail around the beginning of the game, you knew he always cringed when killing things, you knew exactly how much pity he held for himself and how secretly scared he could get behind that bravado.  Sweeps ago, many of those things made you loathe him, stongly loathe him, but now they makes you want to protect him, fight not for him or against but beside him. You were, for once, genuinely interested in what another troll had to say. You had somehow turned pale for Eridan the Loserfish; according to the calm face across yours, he felt the same way. _Nothing at all._ No obscure thoughts and strings of long words, no search for meaning, no anguish, no lonliness, no hatred, no sorrow. All that remained was remorse and a distant comfort.

This whole thing felt like a lucky dream, a particularly lucid dream you were about to wake up from any second. Get up, adjust roboarm and head out to feed Spidermom. A dream that made a better reality than reality ever did... Then again, you started the fucking game idea anyways. This bittersweet situation feels more like an ending than anything else, you feel ready to die now you found peace, and you deserve to die and maybe even want to die because all your life you've been such a fucking asshole for reasons no one (except maybe Eridan) can or want to justify. It may tip the scales to fairness again. It wouldn't be so bad now. You'd embrace death with open arms now, even though you don't quite want to leave Eridan behind anymore, he almost became a part of you here...

But then, you wake up.


	3. Chapter 3

It's sudden, everything is hazy and slow,like time itself had been broken. You weakly thrash before slowly succumbing to the haze of the world around you. You don't dare open your eyes. _Too goddamn fucking weird._ You slip off into the now empty darkness once more in exhaustion. 

 

 Next time you wake up, you're able to think a bit more clearly, definitley clear enough to think, you think. You open your eyes and sit up. You're in a recuperacoon... your recuperacoon? You blindly grope around where the table by your recuperacoon would be, and where your glasses would be if they were on the table that may or may not be there... You find them and put them on, the entire world coming into focus with your constant blinking. Stupid eyesight eightfold and still needing these godamn glasses. You are in your room in the veil, full of broken black oracles with d4 covering the sheet metal floor long rusted in spots by the fluid in aforementioned black oracles. Stupid modus. Everything is organized into little piles. "Kanaya" You think immediatly, _which means she was in your room._ Stupid Fussyfangs _._  You remove your hands from the edge of the recuperacoon to cover your mouth and immediatly regret it when you plunge right back into your recuperacoon with a "Sploosh". Stupider life.

 

You flail and eventually maneuver out of the sopor, having not been in long enough for it's usual soothing qualities to take affect. Your glasses are covered with the green slime. Eurgh. While you climb out and make a break for the ablutionblock to clean your glasses, you trip twice, landing on your arm and your face, respectively; running is different now, more solid? Was that the word? Somehow your glasses remain unmamed and you run them under the tap without any more mishaps... okay you drop them once but that didn't do anything at all to anything.

 

Only when you place them back on your face you snap back to reality. That troll girl in the mirror can't be you. She's sad and empty looking. She has your scars, your glasses and your horns but she just isn't you. She can't be you... yet when you trail your hand to the center of your chest, where a thin scar is, where blue blood was flooding out, where a sword (cane? canesword?) was, her hand moves too. Oh gog. Oh gog oh gog oh gog oh gog oh gog oh gog oh gog oh gog. Just how much did you change. JUST HOW MUCH DID YOU CHANGE. You wash your face as fast as possible and abscond the fuck back into your private section of your section of the lab, almost forgetting to put on a set of clothing before collaspsing in a pile of clean shirts, jeans and jackets... all folded? Your brain registers "Kanaya!!!!!!!!" again and you double facepalm... somehow managing to throw yourself off balance with this gesture. Stupid pile. Despite this minor setback, you bury yourself in the pile to think. The dreambubbles must have shifted again or something, any minute now the bleeding will be back and everything will again be distant... but your eyes weren't empty.

 

You feel like you were just trampeled by a herd of musclebeasts. Why is this happening to you? Why won't this end? You scrape your claws down your arm, hard, until you see blood pool in the five shallow gashes in your forearm. You are alive. You almost wish you were dead. You don't want this because you don't deserve this because you are the worst troll left. You are breathing heavily, like every breath will be your last. You don't have much time to just try and keep it together and not have a panic attack because your door opens (Damn the secondary ways around the lab!) with a loud, familiar and oddly comforting-

 

"Vvris?" Eridouche is alright, somehow that puts a little light of hope inside your mind.

 

"Eridan, over here." You call out, your voice a little smaller than it was meant to be.

 

Eridan comes into your range of sight just in time to distract you and in ways protect you from youself. He came in with just enough decency to get a pair of pants and his scarf and cape on. No shirt, no socks, no shoes no common sense and just enough brainpower to remember those square glasses. You snrk just a little and realize only too late you should climb out of your denim-cotton fortress. He looks like he's about to laugh when he sees you buried in the pile of clothing. You quickly worm your way out, sit on the pile and pat a space next to you, which Mr. Shirtless is only too eager to take. You feel slightly relaxed near the Loserfish, though a long, large scar on his waist bothers you, it's jagged and loops all the way around with no beginning and no end. You knew, hell, you _saw_  Kanaya took him down (who were you to judge?), but it still worried you, it chilled you to the core to see it, to see the aftermath of the devastation that killed your moirail... moirail. You had a moirail now... A moirail who was not wearing about a third of the clothing he should be.

"So wwhat noww almighty Mindfang?" Eridan asked with more than a few hints of sarcasm. You almost laugh as you watch him talk with his hands, overdramatic, exaggerated movements that look practiced and streamlined somehow. He calms the stormy waters in your thinkpan, but you do end up giggling when you realize your movements when you talk are pretty close to his when you talk, flailing and agressive. The little things are beginning to become clearer. 

 

"Wwhats so funny?" Eridan had to ask.

 

"We both talk with our hands in the same way." You reply, noticing only then the subconscious sweeping and jerking motions of your arms, wrists and hands. A stupid thing to notice since you've been doing this even as a grub, the sopor must still be in your system.

 

 "And we then go see if we can find anyone else, after you put on a shirt." Gigglefest. You never used to giggle (You had a loud, raspy, coughing laugh thank you very much), but somehow things were both very serious and very casual right now. Tension hung in the air, and you both could feel it.

 

"Put on a shirt first? wWhat if Jack wwas there, huh? Maybe it wwouldn't matter"

 

 "It will take a minute and I can see all your gills and ribs Fishyfood! Put on a shirt or I'll make you wear one of miiiiiiiine~" You taunt him jokingly in a sing-song voice.

 

 Later you both walk to the computer room wearing eachother's shirt and cape, respectivley, laughing like a very, very manic Sollux. Your shirt just reaches below his scar, exposes a fair amount of midriff and is far too tight on him, the violet cape is baggy on your thin shoulders and drags a fair amount behind your feet because it is too long for you. You both also swapped glasses and are bumping into everything from walls to eachother, despite of having pretty much the same prescription. You don't care about how stupid you look. You don't care about Jack or life or who deserves what. You don't care because you're too busy laughing at how stupid your moirail looks; though when you both stumble into the main area, the computer room in all it's glory of the Veil, the cheer turns to awkwardness.


	4. NOTICE:

((I'm sorry this isn't a legitimate chapter, but a lot of crap's been going on with my life lately and I'm not sure if I should just abandon this fic. I've gotten into a little bit of legal problems and health complications and all that on top of extra summer courses and I'm not sure if this whole wave of crap will die down. I lost the plot notes for this fic awhile ago and it really has been a long while, and I'm not really sure if my writing style's changed. So this is partially for feedback, and partially a warning that this is on indefinite hiatus until I feel the need to pick it up again or if anyone actually wants me to.))


End file.
